To the Russian Collegium of the C.C.

Written: Written in February 1911
Published:
First published in 1931 in Lenin Miscellany XVIII.
Published according to the manuscript.
Source:Lenin
Collected Works,
Progress Publishers,
[1974],
Moscow,
Volume 17,
pages 106-109.
Translated: Dora Cox
Transcription\Markup:R. CymbalaPublic Domain:
Lenin Internet Archive
(2004).
You may freely copy, distribute,
display and perform this work; as well as make derivative and
commercial works. Please credit “Marxists Internet
Archive” as your source.
• README

In view of the possibility and likelihood of the Central
Committee being convened in Russia, we consider it our duty to outline our
views on several important questions affecting our position as people
responsible to the Party.

(1) At the January 1910 Plenary Meeting, we, responsible
representatives of the Bolshevik trend, concluded an agreement with the
Central Committee, published in the Central Organ, No. 11. Our application,
submitted by three officials, with power of attorney from
Meshkovsky,[2] is a formal cancellation of this agreement owing to the
non-fulfilment of its clearly-defined conditions by the
Golos and Vperyod groups. Naturally, it is understood
that we, although compelled to submit this application because no
functioning Central Committee actually exists and there is the beginning of
a split abroad, will willingly withdraw it, or agree to a review of the
agreement, if the Central Committee succeeds in meeting and in
re-establishing Party work and the Party line violated by the
afore-mentioned factions.

(2) The Party line was clearly defined by the Plenary Meeting, and it
is useless for the Golos group and Trotsky and Co. to try to
confuse the issue. The line consists in recognising that both
liquidationism and otzovism are bourgeois theories having a fatal
influence on the proletariat. After the Plenary Meeting, in violation of
its decisions, these two trends have developed and taken shape in
anti-Party factions—the Potresov and Golos groups on the one
hand, and the Vperyod group on the other. Among the Mensheviks,
support for the Party line laid down by the Meeting was forthcoming from
only the so-called pro-Party or Plekhanov
group, those who have been and still are resolutely conducting a
struggle against the Potresov and Golos trends.

(3) For this reason, as representatives of the Bolshevik trend, we
emphatically protest against the Golos group’s attack on
Innokenty[3] for having refused, in the summer of 1910, to
recognise as candidates for co-option those Mensheviks who remained true to
Golos or whose actions were not fully indicative of their Party
affiliation. In doing so, Innokenty , the chief representative of
a trend in Bolshevism differing from ours, acted correctly, and we have
written proof that precisely as its representative he defined the
Party principle uniting all Bolsheviks, before witnesses from the
P.S.D.,[1]
in the manner shown.

(4) The attempt of the Golos group, in the name of the
splitting faction of émigrés, to propose from abroad “their
own” candidates for co-option to the C.C. cannot be regarded as anything
but an unheard-of affront. While at the Plenary Meeting there may have been
people who sincerely believed the pledges of the Mensheviks to struggle
against the liquidators, now, a year later, it is quite clear that the
Golos people cannot be trusted on this question. We protest
resolutely against candidates being put forward for election by the
émigré faction of liquidators, and demand that Plekhanov’s
followers in Russia be circularised, they can undoubtedly
provide canididates from among the pro-Party Mensheviks.

(5) The splitting moves of the Golos and Vperyod
groups and of Trotsky are now fully recognised, not only by the Bolsheviks
and the Poles (in the Central Organ), but also by Plekhanov’s group (see
the Paris resolution of Plekhanov’s group). We assert that the
first decisive step towards a split was the announcement made by
Trotsky on November 27, 1910, without the knowledge of the C.C., of the
convening of a conference and of the “fund” for it. Our application
(December 5, 1910) was the reply we were forced to make to that
announcement. The Vperyod school has become one of the centres of
this split; Trotsky took part in it in defiance of the clear
decision of the Party School Commission. We were blamed in print
by Golos for “disorganising” this
school. Considering it our duty to disorganise anti-Party
émigré factions, we demand the appointment of a commission to
investigate the “funds” of this school and the help given it
by Trotsky and Golos. By shouting about expropriation, which we put an
end to once and for all at the Plenary Meeting, the Golos group
are not only blackmailing, but are covering up their
moral (and not only moral) support of the violators of
the resolution of the Meeting.

(6)
Olgin,[4] a follower of Plekhanov, has disclosed that Dan frankly
explained the desire of the Golos group to transfer the C.C. to
Russia as being due to the probability (or inevitability) of its
failure. The Party tribunal will have to make a pronouncement on
this. Anyone who has followed the Golos group’s policy over the
past year will have no doubt that in actual fact they have been
splitting the C.C. and hampering its work. The London candidates of
Golos are not only alive, but carry out political work in
an anti-Party spirit both in the workers’ unions and in the
press. By absenting themselves from the C.C. meeting, they con firm
their liquidationism. For this reason we are in duty bound to warn the
comrades on the C.C. in Russia, who are working under desperately difficult
conditions (since they are all known to the police), that they are
also threatened by an internal enemy inside the Party. We cannot manage
without some sort of base abroad unless we are prepared to run the risk of
a single failure on our part freeing the hands of the disruptive
Potresovs. The Central Committee Bureau Abroad, which is now
carrying out a policy of aid to the Vperyod and
Golos groups and to Trotsky, cannot be allowed to remain
abroad. We cannot rely on the pledged word or the “signing” of a
resolution. We must, if we wish to be realistic politicians who
are not deluded by mere formalities, study the ideological-political
trends emanating from the working-class movement and from the counter
revolutionary influence on it.

These trends have grown and developed since 1908. They have brought
Plekhanov’s group and the Bolsheviks closer together, and have created a
bloc between the Golos and Vperyod groups and Trotsky,
who support the split while endeavouring to hide its existence. The
immediate future of our Party (and it is useless closing our eyes to this)
will inevitably
be determined by the struggle along these lines; not the desires of
individuals or groups, but the objective conditions of the epoch, as shown
in the resolution of the Plenary Meeting, give rise to the struggle.

The representatives of the Bolshevik trend, signatories to
the agreement with the C.C. in January 1910 (three, and on the authority of
the fourth,
Meshkovsky).[5]